Due to the sad pause in trading by the wonderful Revive My Device in Brockley, I’m seeking an equally fab business who can step in with Macbook and IPhone maintenance issues, and getting me ready for Microsoft’s latest shenanigans which might render my Word package unusable. Help! In hopes of some good recommendations, and thanks in advance!
Only heard yesterday my go-to repair shop in Sydenham also appears to have closed down - they have relocated occasionally in the past and if I find where they are I will let you know.
Intrigued about your comment on MS Word being rendered unusable - is this for the Mac only or have you obtained a deeper insight from someone?
MS direction of travel on the design of Office 365 has degraded the qualities of that package substantially and whilst I have protested directly to them all I get in response is AI generated company lines (aka MS BS).
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I’ve had great and very affordable results with the guys at Electronics Stop next to Canvas and Cream. They’ve replaced a screen and battery on one phone, and a screen on another. Not sure if they do Macbook repairs, but it’d be worth asking. There’s also a great but slightly more expensive Apple specialist just before you get to the Watson’s General Telegraph on the left hand side as you drive down Forest Hill Road.
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For personal use, I’ve now ditched all of MS Office / 365 and gone for OpenOffice https://www.openoffice.org/ Another good free alternative to Word is Libre Office https://www.libreoffice.org/ Unfortunately, my employer expects us to use MS for work purposes, so I’m lumbered with MS on my work laptop…
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I also use and recommend OpenOffice although last time I looked there wasn’t a version for iPad.
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I don’t know anything about iPad/iPhone from first hand experience, but apparently this is a port of Open Office to iOS, so if anyone can comment on it, let us know.
Thanks! I’ll check it out.
I got a message direct from Microsoft saying Word would only work with pretty advanced IoS’s after 16 June.
Thanks for the tips. I may check out… but pretty addicted to standard Word. I also need help backing everything up as my separate hard drive is full so haven’t backed up for 252 days as I keep being reminded!
Did the message specify what IoS release had to be installed on your Mac to keep MS Word operational?
And do you know if your Mac can be updated to get over the release threshold required ?
If your Mac is locked below a version that keeps Word working, I have been experimenting with a utility that bypasses Apple’s IoS lock. It’s not a guarantee but if you find you cannot continue on the ioS update path it may be worth exploring.
On the backup front - if you have linked the Mac to your iCloud account it may be the case that your backup is already on the “cloud”.
You can check by going to settings and confirming whether the link has been made.
Otherwise you have two options - link to your iCloud account and/or execute a backup to another external hard drive - you can purchase am external drive very cheaply, the key would be to calculate how much space do you need to do execute the backup. I have been purchasing cheap 250gb drives SSD drives for upto £30 and if you need a case or adaptor for it for a few pounds more. Careful selection is everything - you can pay a great deal more for branded high-end SSDs.
Or subscribe to a different cloud service e.g. sync.com
Like the Microsoft octopus, however, that has its tentacles in everything, Apple’s magic walled garden makes things work better when it’s all Apple products integrated. For example I have an iPad with Apple pencil, but my notes don’t get saved to cloud services except when I save to Apple’s own iCloud. It’s annoying how they try to make you join the Windows team or the Apple team.
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Thanks for the info @One_Real_JGD - I’m on Monterey and can’t go any higher. All this stuff befuddles me a bit, which is why Revive My Device were so great for me! I’d just go in periodically and get it all sorted. They did something that meant Word would still work last time, but before this current move by Microsoft. Anyhow, I will find time to investigate as being locked out of all my Word files would be a disaster. I just emailed a load of files from my current project to myself - might try putting the stuff on Pages until I get a better solution! Will check out whether my stuff is backed up though - my external harddrive is full of Time Machine backups by the look of it - so won’t take any more… aagh!
Hi again,
As I advised in the earlier post you have more than one step available to provide more space for your Time Machine backups - EITHER purchase a new SSD external drive, connect it to your Macbook and let Time Machine resume its backup function OR increase or purchase new cloud based space.
On keeping your MS Word functional, a little research produces this link with an extract below:
So, as you report in your post you run the Macbook on Monteray, the functionaliy and operation of MS Word may not be affected as far as continued use is concerned.
Without being too technical, there is a product with which I have been experimenting with some success which bypasses Apple’s efforts to prevent so-called unsupported Macs from running newer versions of the OS. In short an OS upgrade can be installed on older Mac hardware that is no longer supported by Apple.
Good luck.